Bus Sim 21 and The Skywalker Saga are free on Epic

Monday, RPG Dustgrave has an early access release date, and the UK government bans a pro-Palestinian game. Tuesday, Jeffrey makes me angry every month, so it has to be Prime Gaming, Teeto has a demo, and Nintendo has a music app that adds two more tracks because Apple Music isn’t enough, apparently. Wednesday, the only thing to make Ariana Grande’s appearance in Wicked worse is to put her in a Funko game, so that’s what they’ve done, and XDefiant is about to have double X’s across its eyes. Then on Thursday, if you want to look like a tool, AR glasses are the new 2000s hands-free device.

Moving on to the Epic Games Store and the free games available, we’ll start with LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga because talking about Space BREXIT is my favorite thing. Might as well be called that as people try to defend the gatekeeping they do for a series spread wider than your dad’s legs when he puts a shift in at Millthorpe Working Men’s Club. What do you honestly need me to say, it is LEGO and it is Star Wars. As long as the kids aren’t beating each other over the head with the controller, let them play Space Cowboy/allegory for American Imperialism that no one got.

Truthfully, it is the only LEGO Star Wars game you really need because it has all five episodes with four piles of hot, steaming piles of offal. Sadly it is also one of those LEGO games that forgot that it was a LEGO game, and thus Liam Neeson (as played by Tom Kane) is saying something about letting the Gungans go from his concentration camp so he can find his family. The fact it is voiced means the appeal of a LEGO game is lost as the early games had some actually decent physical comedy, which this version has smatterings off.

Moving on to the second game, and its Bus Simulator 21 Next Stop. Released in 2021, I did a review before it had the large update and the bountiful amounts of DLC that includes doing a school bus run. Speaking with actual bus drivers who’ve done service work (which this sort of bus work is), you’ll eventually want to kill a piss-soaked pensioner for paying a $10 fair in pennies or you’ll want to kill yourself. I can honestly say, from my time playing Bus Simulator 21, I also wanted to kick a pensioner to death and ramming a phone up a teenager for playing their music too loud.

Cartoonish, a little too heavy on some of its more annoying parts (the old woman’s voice haunts me), and so on, I somewhat enjoyed my time with Stillalive Studios’ Bus Simulator 21. Very much another one of those weird job-based simulators typically for boring dads, it is something that gets very repetitive very quickly. If you enjoy truck sims or generally job sims such as Police Simulator: Patrol Officers and Construction Simulator, you’ll enjoy Bus Simulator 21 well enough.

All this week you can pick up both Bus Simulator 21 Next Stop and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga on the Epic Games Store until the 12th of December.

However, you might have noticed I went a bit longer than I usually do. This isn’t the last Epic article of the year, but I’ve got a feeling it possibly will be the last relevant one for the year. Next week there is a mystery game, which typically means we’re about to kick-start the daily mystery game available on Epic. So starting next week, you might need to be checking Epic itself daily for a number of repeats and maybe a big offering or two.